Sara Shepard - Killer

“Hi, Hanna!” Kate waved. “Glad you made it!”

“You weren’t invited,” Hanna blurted.

“Yes, I was.” Kate’s smile didn’t falter.

A muscle beneath Hanna’s right eye twitched. A bloom of red traveled from her neck to her cheeks. Aria swiveled back and forth between the girls, feeling both confused and fascinated at the same time.

Meredith looked amused. “Mike, you brought two dates?”

“Hey, it’s a party,” Mike said, shrugging. “The more the merrier, right?”

“That’s what I say!” Kate crowed. When superthin Kate smiled a certain way, she reminded Aria of the screeching gibbon on her National Geographic Animals of the World poster that still hung on her old bedroom door. Hanna was definitely the prettier of the two.

Hanna rolled her shoulders back, strutted over to Meredith, and stuck out her hand. “Hanna Marin. I’m an old friend of the family.” She proffered her gift to Meredith, and Meredith put it in the pile with the other things. Hanna glowered at Kate, then settled on the other side of Mike, squishing in so that their butts shared a couch cushion.

Kate ogled Hanna’s Time Capsule flag belt. “What’s that thing?” She pointed at a black blob Hanna had drawn.

Hanna shot her a haughty look. “It’s a manga frog. Duh.”

Aria sat down on the rocker, overwhelmingly weirded out. She caught Hanna’s eye, pointed to her cell phone, and started typing Hanna a text—Hanna had reluctantly given Aria and the others the number to her iPhone that morning. What R U doing here ?

Hanna’s iPhone beeped. She read the text, glanced at Aria, and typed. Seconds later, Aria’s phone buzzed. Y didn’t U tell us U were moving 4 drs down from Ian ?

Aria opened up a reply text. Hanna couldn’t dodge the question that easily. I just found out myself, she wrote back. So do U like Mike?

Maybe , Hanna wrote. He’s the one guy you can’t steal from me.

Aria gritted her teeth. Hanna was referring to the time last fall when Aria had dated her ex, Sean Ackard. To this day, Hanna seemed certain that Aria had stolen Sean from her.

Meredith began unwrapping her large pile of gifts, displaying everything on the coffee table. So far, she’d received a bunch of baby toys, a receiving blanket, and a breast pump from Mike. When she got to a gift wrapped in striped paper, Kate sat up straighter. “Oh, that one’s mine!” She rubbed her hands together gleefully. Hanna’s scowl deepened.

Meredith sat back down on the couch and unwrapped the box. “Oh my God,” she breathed, lifting a cream-colored onesie from a layer of pink tissue paper.

“It’s organic Mongolian cashmere,” Kate recited. “Completely fair trade.”

“Thank you so much.” Meredith pressed the onesie to her face. Byron felt it between his fingers, nodding sagely as if he were a cashmere connoisseur. Frayed cotton T-shirts and flannel pajama pants were usually more his thing.

Hanna abruptly stood up, letting out a small squeak. “Did you snoop in my room?”

“Excuse me?” Kate asked, widening her eyes.

“You knew ,” Hanna shrieked. “I searched for hours for the perfect thing.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Kate shrugged.

At that moment, Meredith was unwrapping the stork-wrapped gift that Hanna had brought. Inside was another box from Sunshine. “Oh,” Meredith said pleasantly, lifting an identical cashmere onesie out of identical pink tissue paper. “It’s beautiful. Again.”

“One can never have too many of those,” Tate, one of Byron’s Hollis colleagues, guffawed, a glob of hummus falling into his scraggly beard.

Kate tittered good-naturedly too. “Great minds think alike, I guess,” she said, which made Hanna’s face contort with rage. Mike’s head swiveled from one girl to the other; he was obviously lapping up the catfight drama.

Suddenly, Aria noticed a dark shape moving outside the front window. Goose bumps rose on her arms. Someone was standing in the yard, watching the party.

She looked around the room, but no one else seemed to notice. Clearing her throat, she rose from the couch and crept down the hall. Her heart pounded as she turned the doorknob and stepped outside. The neighborhood was deathly quiet, and the air smelled like a woodstove. The sky was getting dark, and the lamp at the end of Aria’s new driveway cast a pale gold circle on the grass. When she saw the figure again by the mailbox, she jumped back. Thankfully, it wasn’t Ian. It was…

“Jenna?” Aria cried softly.

Jenna Cavanaugh was wearing a heavy quilted black coat, black mittens, and a gray hat with earflaps. Her golden retriever’s tongue dangled from his mouth. She cocked her head toward the sound of Aria’s voice. Her lips parted.

“It’s Aria,” Aria explained. “I moved here with my dad yesterday.”

Jenna nodded faintly. “I know.” She didn’t move. There was a guilty look on her face.

“Are you…okay?” Aria asked after a moment, her heart pounding. “Do you need something?”

Jenna pushed her big Gucci sunglasses up the bridge of her nose. It was strange, seeing someone wearing sunglasses at dusk. She looked as if she was about to say something, but then she turned, waving her hand. “No.”

“Wait!” Aria called, but Jenna kept walking. Her dog’s tags jingled. Her shoes made no sound. After a moment, all Aria could see of her was her glowing white cane, slowly drifting from side to side to the end of the street.

Wednesday evening, Emily placed four cream-colored dinner plates around the square farmhouse table in the Colberts’ dining room. When she got to the silverware, she paused, puzzled. Did knives go next to forks, or spoons? Her own family’s dinners were casual free-for-alls. Emily and her sister Carolyn often ate later than their parents because of swim practice.

Isaac strolled in from the kitchen, his eyes looking extra blue in his shrunken V-neck sweater and dark denim jeans. He took Emily’s hand and pressed something smooth and round into it. She stared into her palm. It was a teal blue ceramic ring. “What’s this for?”

Isaac’s eyes were bright. “No reason. Because I love you.”

Emily pressed her lips together tightly, overcome. No one she’d dated had given her a gift before. “I love you too,” she said, and slid the ring onto her pointer finger, where it fit best. She couldn’t stop thinking about what had happened between them yesterday. It felt surreal…but wonderful, too—a great distraction from thinking about A’s return. All day at school, she kept sneaking into the girls’ bathroom, inspecting herself in the mirror, looking for changes. It was always the same Emily staring back at her, with the same sprinkling of freckles, the same wide brown eyes, the same slightly upturned nose. She kept waiting to see a special glow or a knowing smile, something to indicate a transformation. She wished she could grab Isaac’s shoulders, kiss him hard, and whisper that she wanted to do it again. Soon .

A loud crash in the kitchen shattered Emily’s thoughts into a million pieces. Not that she’d dare tell Isaac now , of course. Not with his parents around.

Isaac took the silverware from Emily and started placing it next to the plates—spoons next to knives on the right, forks alone on the left. “You look nervous,” he said. “Don’t worry. I told my parents not to bring up Ali’s trial.”

“Thanks.” Emily tried to smile. Prying questions about Ali’s trial were the least of her problems tonight—she was more worried about what exactly Mrs. Colbert had heard about yesterday. When she’d arrived at the door, Mrs. Colbert had greeted her stiffly, as if she wasn’t pleased to see her. And after Emily came out of the powder room just now, she swore Mrs. Colbert was watching her judgingly, as if she thought Emily had forgotten to wash her hands.